Giantslayer: With GM Placeholder of Doom

Game Master Foxy Quickpaw

Well, yeah, but Menrozzar's plan was also to kill the leader and then see if he could turn the rest of the fort's denizens against each other to fight over who her successor was. Or does the Twisted Hearts tribe actually have a clear chain of command?

That might also work. But so far no steps have been taken to provoke this.

I’m moving, and cleaning out my parents’ house, so it likely won’t be practical for me to post much of anything before Dec 1st. I’m without keyboard access for a few days.

See you back soon.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Bupkis wishes you a Merry Christmas!

I notice that some people are missing out on some of their combat bonuses. Daseem's attack bonus should be +10 before modifiers (that's what his character sheet says).

Menrozzar forgot to add Inspire Courage. Also, shouldn't he have a masterwork weapon?

Nope. I don't have a masterwork weapon.

That's largely okay, since the plan is to grab an amulet of mighty fists and fight with claws and bites (and eventually wings and tail). However, it does make me struggle a bit for the moment until I can get one.

Ah yes I forgot weapon training, good point Bupkis.

Sorry for the silence. Had a very busy time up till Christmas day.

I guess the giant fooled me by not making its AoO on Menrozzar. :)

Bupkis has the Roll with It campaign trait, not to be confused with the Roll with It goblin trait (blame Paizo for naming two different traits the same thing)! The campaign trait doesn't require a roll — it simply turns a critical hit from a giant into a normal hit, once/day.

Roll with It Giantslayer Campaign Trait wrote:

You’ve trained with some of the best giantslayers out there, and have learned how to avoid the worst effects of a giant’s powerful attacks. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Reflex saves. In addition, once per day, when a creature with the giant subtype successfully confirms a critical hit against you with a weapon or a slam attack (not a spell or special ability), you can roll with the attack. You take normal damage from the blow, as if the critical had not been confirmed. You must be aware of the attack and able to react to it—if you are denied your Dexterity bonus to AC, you can’t use this ability. If you are a dwarf or a gnome, you can use this ability twice per day.

Then your turn.

The Giant didn’t AoO me because I have 10’ reach, Bupkis.

Assuming your stats are correct, with bloodrager 5 and dragon disciple 1, you have no second attack as DD is 3/4 BAB

It is. Sorry about that - what I get for posting one-handed with a baby.

Sorry traveling today back from holiday, super tired. Will post tomorrow.

I think Ivan and Menrozzar are up.

Oh, shoot, I am. Sorry for the hold up.

Now it's everyones turn again.

K25 is above K11. And there you can see, that K2b is not adjacent to K25.

From the map, it looks like going down a rope from our current location would take us to the orc tents (and waiting orcs). Umlo (Ingrahild's brother) is beyond the tents.

So uh Daseem probably wants to fight this guy. Does anybody have anything to say before the swords come out?

I mean, Bupkis did say something, so there's that. Menrozzar is mostly interested in making sure Trunau isn't threatened by him, so whether we get the orc chieftain to agree not to attack Trunau or kill him doesn't make a difference to me.

So uh Daseem probably wants to fight this guy. Does anybody have anything to say before the swords come out?

Wondering myself how a long term agreement would look like. But on the short run the orc has a nice surprise for Daseem. :P

Let's do a littlel Sherlock game, shall we? I won't give you the skull for simply running through every room and taking 20 on the search. Well, I might, but it would be up to 80 posts to get through all the rooms. ;)

I'll cut you some slack on prepared spells if you have ideas.

Okay, the body is in K34. We know where that is.

The skull was not included in the description of either K32 (Grenseldek's treasure room) or K36 (Grenseldek's room). It wasn't included in the description of K15 or the attached kitchen, nor K19 after Bupkis chewed on himself.

Our best bets for where to look are probably K27-K28 or the Shaman's Tent Bupkis saw earlier (not sure which number). Those seem the most likely places for the skull, since the crushed skull was attached to the skeleton in the cesspool from earlier.

We did find two scrolls of Speak with Dead, FWIW (in K34). Could they have been saving the head for questioning? One possibility is to question the ogres that were doing the ritual (although the DC to resist won't be terribly high).

Just ask the stupid ogre girls and not the sorcerer, when you're worried about saves.

I suppose that Droja might be able to speak Giant. We don't know much about her though, so no idea about her motivation.

There is this thing called social interaction. Try asking her maybe? ;)

sorry all, last year of college and everything seems to be trying to screw me over. Been very hectic, and probably will be until the weekend (hopefully not longer) but that depends on whether or not the schools people get their asses in gear and do their actual jobs. heh.

Would Droja have to cast Speak with Dead from one of the scolls, in order to question the ogres in Giant, or could she act as an interpreter when Daseem casts the spell from a scroll?

I'm not sure. But you can simply hand it to her along with the questions as the spell is on her list.

I don't think that we completely explored the secret door in K31; there were some switches (3?) that we didn't play around with. That seems to be the area around Genseldek's tower where something might be hidden.

Bupkis motions towards the body of the giant, "You think this Grenseldek we slay?"

He checks out the bedchamber, on the lookout for shinies.

Perception: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (4) + 9 = 13

It's possible that the skull isn't shiny, so Bupkis didn't pay attention to it. :)

I don't think anyone else searched the bedchamber.

Ivan did, but he rolled similarily bad.

Annoyingly, Bloodragers do get sufficient skill points, but don't get detect magic. GM, could I use Knowledge (arcana) to attempt to figure it out? I can't use Spellcraft to identify items without detect magic.

I can offer you, to put detect magic on your spell list. You even get the spell known for free, not counting against your spells known as a blood rager. But you have to cast it as a 1st level spell using your spells per day.

I will take that offer, depending on the answer to this question: Could I take Leadership at level 7 with Amira as the cohort so that she stays with us and can handle identification of magic items?

If you want leadership you can take it. But Amira isn't going anywhere soon, as the area offers no real oppportunities for parting. Like a city. And she would stay with you if you ask, no need for a feat here.

Is everyone ready for a big fight? Bupkis needs to heal up 12 hp. He would benefit somewhat from resting, but he still has most of his combat ability remaining.

As for leadership: You would have a leadership score of
7+2+Bonusses

For a cohort that would be
7+2+1 Fair and generous. Nice.

For followers you'd be at no bonus. Which means you'd have to wait til level 8 to get the first ones. And before you try to attract followers, I'd like to know what you plan to do with them.

I'm not asking to limit you. If you work on getting enough followers in Trunau to finally overthrow Halgra and take her seat - be my guest. But leadership has a big red blinking ROLEPLAY sign attached to it. And I'd like to know how we manage to fit that into the adventure.

Would you be okay with just ignoring the Followers aspect of the feat? I'm mainly looking at this as a way to keep Amira around long-term, and hopefully our in-game roleplay would be sufficient to convince her to stay and help us. I'm willing to expend the feat to hopefully keep her level close enough to ours that she won't be in too much danger adventuring with us.

If you'd prefer to not deal with it, that's fine, too, and I'll take the deal you offered on detect magic.

I have fun playing Amira. And of course part of my fun is to level her. But I keep her in the background, for
a) not having her killed, and
b) not hogging too much of the game.

So if keeping Amira around is your only reason for taking leadership, then forget about it. You don't need that to keep her around as a level appropriate companion.

Okay, great. I didn't know if she was a "temporary NPC" we had use of, or if she was a permanent NPC. I'll take the deal offered on detect magic - getting to use detect magic even though it isn't a Bloodrager spell is worth the price of a level 1 spell slot.

Re a fight, Daseem is down a few HP. I'm up for it though!

How are we doing for wand charges? It's not a good idea to go into a major fight down a significant amount. Bupkis has kinetic healing of course (3d6+11), although that costs 6 NL a pop. If we're running low, resting might be a good idea.

To be fair it's probably more sensible to rest before taking on an army of orcs! Running away might be even more sensible but that's not in Daseem's DNA.

What you're entering is not an encounter, but a war battle. You maybe should take a look at the map, collect some intel about numbers and make a plan. Of course you can also go out, pound on your chest and do an old school battle on an open field.

Amira is down a few spells she wouldn't use in combat anyway.

She'd probably go invisible and poke you with the magic stick.

Is the Barbican K1?

I think we should definitely rest up somewhere, then see if we can draw the orcs to us in a chokepoint that allows myself, Ivan, and Daseem to form a wall while Bupkis and Amira stay behind us - Amira to perform/heal and Bupkis to hit them from range. All three of us have the ability to enlarge ourselves, so we can take up a pretty significant area for a few rounds - plus get a lot of reach.

In a group where everyone fights enemies by clubbing tehm to death, what would you rest for? Or are you procrastinating in fear of the many orcs?

Just for reference: You fought 19 Orcs in four waves when you were level 2 or 3. Now you're level 6. Ok, the orcs are slightly better too.